Design Rangers Camp Blog

I just came across this great article from the “biz ladies” of design*sponge. I have found so many articles by the biz ladies to be inspiring and informative, including: how to form successful biz partnerships, organizing your biz income + expenses, starting a business in tough times, and I actually included this one in a weekly round up blog post from August of 2009 – a very informative article about advertising 101 for small businesses.

To quote the article’s author, Meg Mateo Ilasco, “…an amateur logo design could only hurt your business. Just because you’re an artist, craftsperson, or designer doesn’t make you a skilled graphic designer. Designing a logo takes experience. It’s no easy task to take everything a company stands for and bring it down to a single graphic representation or symbol.”

Meg hits the nail on the head – your logo is everything! The Design Rangers believe it should be clean, have good contrast and be simple. Our professor in college once said “a good logo can be drawn in the sand with a stick”. Think Nike, McDonalds, Mercedes, Apple. The greats ARE clean and simple! Here is a previous blog post that talks briefly about our logo process and what it take to get some pencil marks on a paper to a logo that has impact.

We are passionate about logo design and we love a well designed, thoughtful logo! Here are a few of our favorites: Endurance Army, Property Army, Bottle Rocket, Love Yarn, Women’s Bike Challenge, Lyric Quotes, Beer Garden, and idea couch. What are yours?

When you think of the Disney empire, creative is a word you already associate with the brand. Typically, the mention of Uncle Walt conjures up images of the all-mighty mouse or one of the many animated splendors that come out of the magic castle.

It’s doubtful however that many would envision a talking wine bottle looking for a date with food (a campaign for Epcot’s International Food and Wine festival). Or an ad showing Yoda, using the force at luggage claim (in a campaign for Star Wars Weekends). Yet these are exactly the kind of fun (and funny) ideas and campaigns coming out of Disney’s “Yellow Shoes” in-house creative department.

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Last Spring our good friends, Jessica and Christian Seybold, purchased a little soap and lotion business named Jinny Crickets. Jinny Crickets was founded about 5 years ago in Hays, Kansas. Jessica and Christian wanted to give Jinny Crickets a new name and a new look to better fit their vision for the business. They chose the name Bearski Bath & Body (after their sweet daughter’s nickname and Jessica’s Polish heritage) and then promptly turned to the Design Rangers for the new logo, website, and product label design.

Bearski’s skin-loving products are high-quality, handmade, yet affordable.  Jessica and Christian were looking to give Bearski a hip, cool, and fun personality.  They gave us a lot of great input and ideas – bubbles and lower-case text were kicked around – then… they let us have at it!

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As part of her efforts to consolidate services and bolster her personal brand, Tammy Oler called upon the Design Rangers to re-design her web site. Tammy had two sites that she needed to combine into one site to rule them all! (insert deep booming voice)

Tammy asked us to design a Wordpress site that would showcase her wordslinging and marketing talents as well as incorporate her blog & post her twitter updates. We really wanted the new site to reflect TAMMY and her hip, funky, professional awesomeness!

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